HyperParasite Review - A Love Letter to the 1980s With A Modern Twist

Written by Chris Woodside on April 03, 2020

Reviews: Fight your way through a classic 1980’s downtown action movie as you work your way through American society and become the body snatcher.

You might remember from high school science class that a parasite is an organism that attaches to and lives on a host organism. A hyperparasite is the same, except these parasites live on other parasites. This technical definition of parasites may not seem like the most important nugget of detail as you prepare to play a video game, but this understanding helps us view the setup that HyperParasite presents us, as the titular parasite itself wreaks havoc and destruction, but to the rest of the world, it is our chosen hosts who are responsible for these attacks on this dystopian society.

HyperParasite doesn’t just look like the type of game that would be featured in one of the arcades of your favorite 80’s movie, but it also relies on that nostalgia for its very premise. Fresh with an angry and vulgar President of the United States worried about a foreign parasite that could cause chaos in society, you would be forgiven to think this is a game based on the 2001 Evolution film that fits a hapless group of heroes attempting to save earth from alien domination. While this trope of saving the world from advanced alien forces still exists, HyperParasite offers a refreshing take on this. Rather than attempting to stop the spread of the parasite before it gets out of control, the player is the parasite. What makes this game so interesting and unique, however, is not the impact that playing as the villain (sentient or not) has on the story and how it defies our expectations of the usual hero plot. Rather, the most interesting impact of this choice is how it affects the gameplay and makes HyperParasite a truly unique experience that stands out in the indie market.

There are no hit points. Being a parasite, you have no weapons or any real way to attack. Instead, you must rely on the environment around you. There is a certain innate challenge to all of this. Part of the subversion of expectations in HyperParasite is that, in most games, the difficulty is usually adjusted in tangible ways. If you play on Hard mode, there will be more enemies, usually tougher and with more health, and you are more easily susceptible to their hits and die easier. While there is nothing necessarily wrong with this approach to adjusting difficulty, and this concept does exist in this game as well, it is slightly more complex here. As the parasite, you are truly vulnerable. You don’t get stronger as the game goes on, you don’t get new gear, and the enemies don’t necessarily get stronger. Whether it is in the opening minutes or the final sequence, you die with one shot, and then it is over. The only way to avoid this tragic fate is for you to infect people. If you find a host, you inherit the stats and abilities of that host, at which point it becomes more of the classic 80’s video game shooter. It is a unique way to approach difficulty design, by having you completely helpless and vulnerable regardless of difficulty, and for the only way around that to fit in with the premise of the story and who you are. It also provides a refreshing variety in gameplay as you could go from firing a ton of bullets to seeing your host killed and you are left helpless once again in a matter of seconds.

Not all hosts are immediately susceptible to the virus either. Continuing on that alien trope, you must first unlock the ability to infect a certain type of host by encountering them in the wild, destroying them, and bringing their remains back to be studied by your alien overlords. Somehow, this hijacks the immune system of this particular type of host for every time you encounter them the rest of their run and allows you to infect them and control them as your new host. It is important to do this as much as possible. The more hosts you unlock the ability to infect, the easier the game becomes as you can limit the amount of time you are frantically dodging bullets, looking for your next victim. This is another interesting gameplay mechanic loop, as I found myself channeling my inner Pokemon trainer, attempting to collect and unlock as many different types of hosts as I could. All of these different hosts are more than just different skins that function the same way. While they all share classic 80’s movie character tropes, they do so in meaningful ways and they all hold their own stats with some more powerful than others in a way that makes sense and makes each character a blast to play within their own unique ways.

As fun as the gameplay in HyperParasite is, it doesn’t mean that every aspect of it is flawless. Namely, the level design is where I felt the most disappointed. The game is billed as being procedurally generated in the likes of other rogue lites like the Binding of Isaac. While it does deliver on this promise, it does so by cutting some corners. It seems that, at least on my playthroughs, it was the order of rooms that changed and were generated randomly, rather than the content of the rooms themselves. Even though the rooms might not be exactly similar on each playthrough, there are certain patterns and somewhat recognizable aspects you see over and over again, even if they are presented in a slightly different layout. It is not the most disappointing thing ever, and it doesn’t distract too much from just how much fun the game is to play, but it certainly can get repetitive after several runs if done too close together.

Another aspect of the game that deserves to be discussed is the local cooperative play. I really enjoyed having this in the game, not so much because it is heads and tails better than cooperative play in any other game, but it just seems like more and more games are forgoing this feature entirely in favor of a focus on online play. This feature might not be the most helpful for many of us while we are stuck at home, but if you are lucky enough to have some housemates like myself, this has been the best way to pass some time with some mindless action to break up the endless Netflix binges while we are stuck at home.

Outside of the gameplay, everything else in the game really serves as a love letter to all the great things we still remember from classic 80’s cinema, television, and, obviously, video games. This includes everything from the visuals to the entertaining soundtrack. All of it seems immediately recognizable in its own unique way and makes it very easy to recall your favorite 80’s movie as you fight your way to infect the President and win the game.

HyperParasite presents a game that is somehow familiar, and yet refreshingly unique in so many ways. It functions as the perfect Saturday morning action television show that you remember as a child, which is just what we need during this time of uncertainty for all of us but does so in a way that doesn’t feel old or outdated. While the procedural generation was the most lacking aspect of the game and can make too many consecutive runs a bit tedious, the exhilarating and exciting gameplay more than make up for it. The game blends the best of classic 80’s action with the best of modern roguelikes and creates a truly unique experience filled with hours of fun as you become the body snatcher.